20060109

During Christmas, I had the pleasent opportunity to share my zany japanese DS games with my family. Specifically, my sister and brother-in-law in particular. The specificity of the specifically was showing them Electroplankton.

I thought that they would enjoy it, in fact I was 102.3% positive they would. However, I entirely failed to calculate they would be addicted to it. With frightening speed I found my siblings all flocking to me whenever they could to ask for permission to use it. It was surprising, incredible, and utterly enlightening as to how strong a grip Nintendo has the potential to display over the ever-elusive casual and non-gamers.

Now, I honestly don't think Electroplankton was perfect. It was self-evident to me that many people would fail to understand what the point was. Electroplankton has no specific goals, no carryover from session to session, and no score. The point was a three year old banging keys on a piano, or humming into a kazoo.

There were, unfortunately, a lot of reviews that missed all that. A lot of reviews knocked the game for not being a game, which it never was really. Others slammed it for not being a good music sequencing tool, which it never was meant to be either.

Like I said, the thing isn't a perfect work of art, but it is an incredible work of art. It's the ultimate in electronic key banging, kazoo humming, guitar plucking excelence, and it can only be compared to the simple, child-like creative exploits.

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Who is this strange person?

You don't want to know. Trust me, you really don't. You may think you do, you may feel you do, you might even actually want to know. But really, you don't. There are a lot of reasons why you don't want to know. The first is I'm really quite boring. Trust me on that one, B-O-R-I-N-G. The second is I'm quite insane. Straight jacket insane. Not an interesting insane mind you, just that kind that makes you wake up in the middle of the night screaming something about how the Teletubbies invaded Cuba and set up a regime of Pants, Elephants and Used Cars. The last reason is that you don't want to know. I've probably already let on to too much. I might have to kill you. Speaking of which, where do you live?